How does Chinese capital alter center-periphery relations in Kenya?
Can peripheral groups have meaningful agency with Chinese state entities?
Who determines, and what is considered "local" in local content agreements built into Chinese-financed infrastructure projects?
On this Episode, Erik sits down Elisa Gambino to speak about her forthcoming paper entitled: "Chinese participation in Kenyan Transport Infrastructure: Reshaping Power-Geometries" that looks to answer these questions and more by using Kenya's Lamu Port as a case study.
Elisa Gambino is a doctoral researcher on the African Governance and Space project at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies. You can read her prior writing on labor relations at the Lamu port here https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/02/26/job-insecurity-labour-contestation-and-everyday-resistance-at-the-chinese-built-lamu-port-site-in-kenya/
Recommendations:
Elisa: 1) Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness by Miriam Driessen
2) Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands by Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson
Erik: 1) Putting a Dollar Amount on China's Loans in the Developing World by Huang Yufang and Deborah Brautigam
2) For the American audience: Moving to a mid-tier American city. They are more dynamic than coastal cities give them credit for and one can actually afford to live in them! Added bonus if you move to a swing state!